Two things appear evident in the way the Liberal Party bets are going about their campaign: One is the old style adopted by Noynoy Aquino’s mother, Cory Aquino, on the “fight between good and evil” against then President Ferdinand Marcos, and two, the concentration of attacks on Gloria Arroyo, which still hews to the Cory days’ way of her campaign.

This particular style of campaigning on the Cory Aquino camp was mainly done to demonize Marcos, which was easy, due to the existence of martial rule for 14 years. The fight between good and evil spiel was also one way of attack where Cory’s lack of experience in governance could be evaded.

It is clear that Noynoy and his Yellows are taking the same path, projecting Noynoy as .... MORE

Among those at the forefront of the last few years’ agitation for a revision of the Constitution have been the adherence to the idea of converting the entirety of this country into a federation of regions enjoying autonomy in all areas, except defense and external relations. Though many of them are opposed to the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the federalists have sublimated their antagonism to their quest for a federal republic. In so doing, they have dismayed and alienated the multitude of Filipinos who believe that getting rid of Arroyo is the first priority and federalism and other important governmental issues can be addressed in a post-Arroyo Constitution-revising exercise.

Since they had decided to hitch their wagon to the Arroyo train, the federalists’ cause would move only if the Arroyo project moved forward..... MORE

01/18/2010
Two days from today will be the 10th anniversary of Edsa II, Jan. 20, claimed to be a bloodless regime change. That is a lie. It was born of the blood of murdered men, women and children, from over a dozen dead in the Rizal Day bombing on December 2000, to the machine gunning of another dozen on May 1, 2001 at the Edsa Tres march to Malacañang, to the hundreds killed in 10 years of extra-judicial killings, the countless killings in MILF-Abu Sayyaf clashes and beheadings of Filipinos and soldiers, down to the 57 Maguindanao Massacre victims. It is also a continuation of the Edsa I counter-democratic revolution briefly interrupted by the popular electoral victory of President Joseph Estrada which birthing a government of, by and for the people in mandate, in spirit and in practice.

The country has been lost in the wilderness of Gloria Arroyo, her crony oligarchs and “evil society”; perfidy and treason, government and corporatist corruption, continuous agricultural and industrial deconstruction, social and moral decay. This is not just perfunctory nitpicking.

All the statistics bear out the socio-economic, political deterioration. If there has been no regime change for the past nine years it has not been for lack of attempts (there have been at least three) or lack of popular enmity (Gloria is more unpopular than the demonized Marcos regime); the national patrimony, national coffers and national sovereignty plundered to pay off foreign powers, corporatist interests and local military and police generals to buy the survival of this regime. The annual rise in hunger and poverty indexes bear out the rest.

Two years ago The Economist group reported: “The Philippines has seriously underperformed relative to the region… with per capita GDP growth of 1.0 percent trailing its neighbors’ 4.0-6.0 percent… in 2007, the country lagged behind Thailand, China, Indonesia and was ‘in danger’ of being overtaken by India. The Philippines was also in the bottom rung in terms of foreign direct investments behind Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia… Moreover, the country ranked lower than neighboring countries in the corruption perception index — only a notch higher than Cambodia. Out of 180 countries, the Philippines was ranked 140th in terms of ease of doing business… generating more investment would require reducing power rates, curbing corruption, and cutting red tape. At 18 cents per kilowatt hour, the Philippines has one of highest electricity costs in Asia…”

This Economist report tells the real story of Edsa Dos, but Philippine electricity rates are given special mention in the evaluation of the Philippines’ investment climate. This “highest electricity costs in Asia” is a particular contribution of the Edsa Dos-Gloria Arroyo regime to the Philippines. It’s Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) was hastily enacted into law in the first five months after the coup against the Estrada government, and the consequence is the economic decay that we see today. But that is only part of the story of high basic utilities, business and living costs: The Philippines began instituting the highest per cubic meter water and port services costs in Asia. Consequently, industries have shutdown, a disproportionate share of the national income went to the few family oligarchies (highlighting their special role), while hunger and poverty indexes precipitously rose.

Philippine political democracy also drastically deteriorated. From a triumph of constitutional and popular democracy in the 1998 elections the political system decayed into a constitutional travesty: The use of force and “constructive” constitutional interpretations to overturn a legitimately elected government that faithfully followed the Rule of Law and the mandate of the Constitution. All elections that followed Edsa II smacked of manipulation and outright cheating using gold, goons and guns that made “dagdag-bawas” and “Ampatuan” household words. “State of Rebellion,” “State of Emergency” and “Martial Law” were declared under the slightest pretext. The earlier decade’s improvements of the democratic process and space were all obliterated after the 2001 Edsa II. While in the same period, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam all made strides in its democratic record.

All Filipinos should feel regret and remorse for the lost years since Edsa II. In regretting the nation will learn its lessons and redirect its footsteps to march forward in unity. A golden opportunity presented itself when Corazon Aquino, the Edsa I and II symbol, expressed her “death bed” regret and remorse for the error of Edsa II. That golden opportunity was quashed by her heirs when they brushed off the regret and remorse as a “joke.” Without acceptance of error there is no discernment; without discernment there is only disorientation. This is the real intent of those behind the perpetuation of the error of Edsa II in perpetrating the candidacy of the three oligarchs’ presidential bets upon whom establishment political clout, media and financial resources are being poured. Odd man out in this picture: President Estrada, candidate of the people and the masses.

The task is now to recover from the wasteland of Edsa II and Gloria Arroyo. To achieve this, the nation needs leadership not of promises but of demonstrated faithfulness, to the Rule of Law, to economic sovereignty, to the welfare of the people, to standards of integrity and courage to resist tyranny and the oligarchy in the face of persecution and incarceration, with qualities of magnanimity and fecundity emanating from experience and wisdom. None of the other candidates matches Estrada’s virtues of leadership for the people and the times. The challenge is to break through all the disinformation and misinformation, the distracting din of the propaganda of mainstream media and the oligarchs’ candidates to get the message of Erap across.

MOSCOW — Once encouraged to take dreary factory-line jobs making electric plugs and curlers, blind people in Moscow now have a new option: Working at a hi-tech call center.

The call center in northern Moscow employs almost 1,000 blind and visually impaired people, a bold experiment in a nation where people with disabilities struggle to find interesting jobs — or indeed any job at all.

With a rapid, confident sales pitch, one operator, Alexei Voronov, talked into his headset selling accountancy software..... MORE